Stents are used for a variety of purposes in applications such as gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and respiratory applications. Stents are generally used to open occluded lumens of passageways, to provide support to regions of passageways with weakened walls, and in some cases, deliver drugs or other medication to a particular region of a passageway. However, some circumstances require removal and/or repositioning of a stent. For example, the stent may undergo fatigue or experience some other failure. As another example, the environment around the stent after implantation may change in such a way that the stent is either physiologically unnecessary or even dangerous (e.g., restenosis or hyperplasia). In most cases, stents are deployed in a patient with little or no intention for future removal, and accordingly are not designed for easy retrieval or repositioning. Thus, there is a need in the medical field to create an improved system and method for removing an implanted object in a passageway in a patient. This invention provides such an improved system and method.